Right: Boe Hay and son Ricky with the dog tags which were missing for 35 years.By Kath Gannaway
HEALESVILLE Vietnam veteran Boe Hay had given up long ago any chance of ever seeing his dog tags again.
After 35 years, anyone would have said it was a fair call, but just a few days before Anzac Day, thanks to his son Ricky, his identity crisis was over.
As a bit of a joke Ricky decided to try on a pair of shorts Mr Hay had brought back from Vietnam. In a pocket of the near-new shorts were the missing dog tags.
“I knew straight away what they were when I put my hand in the pocket and felt the metal,” he said.
They were the one thing dad had said over the years that he would have liked to have had as a memento of his time in Vietnam.
Mr Hay was 20 when he went to Vietnam with the Signals Corp.
He returned to Australia in March 1972 after Whitlam’s Labor government was elected. At the time, he says, he didn’t give a lot of thought to the dog tags (Personal Identification Tags) which are embossed with the title AUST, the soldier’s regimental number, initials and name, religion and blood group.
“When I did look for them, I just couldn’t find them. I knew I hadn’t given them away, but after searching for so long I just thought I must have left them over there,” Mr Hay said.
Mr Hay’s wife Lyn said the missing dog tags had been a recurring theme over the years.
“Anytime Vietnam was mentioned, the missing dog tags would come up. If anyone was going to Vietnam he’d joke ‘see if you can find my dog tags’.”
The whole family is still shaking their heads at the quirky circumstances of their discovery, and the fact that the shorts only narrowly missed being thrown out a few years ago by Mr Hay’s mother when she was moving house.
She gave them to Ricky who has had them, still in their plastic bag, sitting at the top of his cupboard for the past three years.
With the dog tags polished up for Anzac Day, Mr Hay didn’t care to elaborate too much on why, or what the metal ID tags mean 35 years down the track.
“They’re a memento.”
